He Never Saw Them Watching Him
by wife-chan
Summary: 10 people who watched Gai without being noticed. 10 people who could have helped, but didn't. 10 times Gai went on with his life without knowing they cared; one way or another.


**Title:** He Never Saw Them Watching Him

**Author:** _wife-chan_

**Rating:** Mature

**Warning:** Angst. Language.

**Disclaimer:** We don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does. We are not making any money from this fan fiction.

**Notes:** Another _wife-chan_ fic, this one a two-shot. :) We have these ten and a few more that will be up later on. This is Wing's first 5/10/20/whatever Truths fic. Tiscue forced her into it :D

**Summary:** 10 people who watched Gai without being noticed. 10 people who could have helped, but didn't. 10 times Gai went on with his life without knowing they cared.

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**1**

He's very 'fight' oriented, but also very composed, because his father has told him over and over again that his taijutsu is advanced and he could accidently hurt or even kill someone. He likes to fight, but even though he's seven - and entered the Academy a year early - he still has to wait until after classes for his father to take him to the training grounds so he can challenge himself against genin.

Because he likes fighting so much, he can't help it when one of the older students pushes him during lunch. The push really only rocks him forward because his balance is too good for a ten year old to knock him over.

So when he spins on his heel and lashes out, it's by accident, its instinct.

When the student's friends descend on him for bloodying the boy's nose, he can't do anything but fight back because he can't go home with bruises. He loves his father, yes, and he doesn't dare disappoint him.

He never meant to hurt them, he just didn't want to see his father look down at him with a frown and tell him that he's not good enough yet because he let a couple of genin wanna-be's hurt him.

But suddenly one of the boys who jumped him starts coughing, blood spurting from between paling lips. That boy was one of the ones who had always been most cruel to him, and since he was one of the best in the class, Gai had struck him a little bit harder than the other; he hadn't meant to, but his father had always said to fight by your opponent's abilities.

The boy sputters, and then his eyes roll up in his head and Gai thinks - scornfully, almost - that he overestimated his opponent this time. And then reality start to set in, gradually.

First there is the silence.

(Gai would become used to these silences in the future, but he wasn't yet and it felt so very heavy on his skin. Almost tangible.)

Then there is movement and shouting. Someone pushes him out of the way and this time he doesn't even try to block it, not caring about the bruises, because a girl's panicked screaming reaches him and the words ring in his ears like death knolls-

_"He's not breathing!"_

-and a few of the other children who had scorned him turn to look at him, and never had he imagined that anything could hurt more than their scorn, but he's wrong; fear is more piercing than any arrow of childish dislike.

He vows, as he watches the teachers running around and the other kids screaming and the green medic's chakra which isn't healing, that he will never touch anyone again until he can control his whole body. He doesn't want people scared of him, and it's not just the other kids that are looking at him with fear, it's the adults too; it's the chuunin that have been fighting in the war, the two jounin that appear out of nowhere to take over for the teachers.

When the boy - the body - is taken away, his father is there, a hand on his shoulder. The look in his eyes is dark and Gai can't look him in the face for the longest time because he's disappointed his father, his teacher.

For the rest of the year he sits in the back corner of the class and the teachers don't call on him to answer questions. The kids won't look at him except out of the corners of their eyes. When they go outside to do taijutsu training he sits to the side and never participates because their afraid he's going to kill another child.

So he waits until the sun has set and he goes outside into his backyard and he practices his taijutsu alone for hours so that he can control his entire muscular structure.

He never sees his father watching him from his bedroom window.

**2**

When he graduates from the Academy, everyone else in the graduating class is two or three years older than him. They all still remember what happened two and a half years ago.

His team is called out and he can see both of his new teammates shudder. In horror or fear, he doesn't know. The Academy teachers wince in sympathy for his teammates and Gai suppresses his desolation.

But when their jounin sensei comes to pick them up, he doesn't seem to care who Gai is and that makes him feel hope.

Then their sensei says that, at most, only two of them will pass, and Gai knows that he's not going to be one of them.

But he's has never been very good at giving up, so when his teammates pair up and decide to fight both against him and their sensei, Gai lets adrenaline run his body - and he passes. He's the only one who passes; the other two clash together and knock themselves out with ninjutsu.

Gai's only advantage is his taijutsu, both his nin- and genjutsu are just slightly above average for his age. But taijutsu is something he is very good at. He has learnt as much as he could about the body, the muscles and their limit; and finds to his surprise that he does know how to win this. He does it without touching his teammates or his sensei even once, and though his sensei spends several moments staring at him in silence (judging him, it feels like) in the end the man only tells him to be there early the next morning and then shunshins away with a slight flutter of leaves.

Gai looks at his unconscious teammates in askance; he's afraid to touch them even to make sure they're alright. In the end he does do the basic checkup with only the lightest of touches and carefully carries them to lie comfortably under a large tree, placing his medical supplies next to them even though it isn't necessary, since they both have their own.

He straightens their clothes and brush grass out of their hair as gently as he can then walks out of the clearing without a backwards glance.

He never sees the assessing eyes of his sensei watching him from a branch just above them.

**3**

After he's killed more people than months he's been alive, he decides that he can't keep a tally anymore. It hurts too much to count every person who falls under his hands even though it is war.

He will never forget his first though.

At eleven years, eight months old, Gai goes into a shinobi supply shop and he sees the greenest outfit he's ever seen before.

He's always liked green because he can hide in the tree leaves like nobody's business.

He tries the single piece suit on and to his surprise it fits. It's a bit stretchy, so he knows that he'll be able to wear it for more than six months - since he's growing like a horse - and it doesn't hinder his taijutsu moves. (He also decides that it looks good under his new chuunin vest.)

The first time he wears it people stare at him as he moves down the street. It's the first time that he's seen something other than fear in anyone's eyes when they look at him. He can't bring himself to care that its scorn and derision.

The feeling of being watched without fear slowly becomes exhilarating and Gai finds that some people are even laughing openly at him. They're not doing it with positive sentiment, but Gai doesn't care, and when one day he walks by a newspaper stand - with the vendor trying to hide a mirthful snort behind his hand - he eyes one of those gossipy tabloid magazines that he's seen girls reading before.

_Keep your youthfulness with this spectacular cream, and don't let winter dominate your features any longer!_

The vendor sees him approach the pink-framed commercial picture with a smiling girl on the cover and for a moment he looks so utterly surprised that Gai almost snorts. And then he has an idea:

"Most Youthful Vendor!" he shouts, putting emphasis on weird places in the sentence and trying to do some of those weird movements he's seen girls do in music videos. He doesn't think he's quite succeeded, but it doesn't matter, because the vendor is doubled over laughing- and for the first time in a long while, it's not a laugh of derision, but of surprise.

Gai decides he likes it, and he buys both the magazine and the picture (despite it not being for sale). He practices the dance movements he tried to do for the vendor, wondering if there is any way to incorporate a more toned-down form of them in his everyday movements and gestures.

There's only one problem with his plan (it's that it's working), and it's that he doesn't like to be in the spotlight. But he endures, because he likes being laughed at more than been feared and cowered before.

He never sees the eyes of Namikaze Minato - Hokage to be - watching him with pride.

**4**

The first time he meets Hatake Kakashi, it's on a battlefield. Gai might no longer keep a running tally of his death toll, but he does count each enemy he kills while on a battlefield. It is a help to his commander that he can say with confidence that he's killed five, ten, thirty-two, of the enemy because then the Konoha forces don't have to worry about those ones.

"-sixteen," His lips are twisted in a snarl as he plunges his hand through the head of an Iwa nin that was about to slice a comrade in two. He flashes away without waiting for thanks or acknowledgment of his deed (they're still scared of him on the killing field because he's proved again and again that green suit or no, he's a deadly child) and turns a lethal attack upon an enemy standing over a grey haired boy a year or so younger than him, "-seventeen."

The boy stares at him with eyes void of emotion and Gai feels the need to pause and give him a 'V' for victory, combined with a smile of flashing teeth - which he doesn't realize are almost red with blood - and clotheslines an oncoming opponent hard enough to crush his trachea in the midst of his stance.

"For Youth!" He calls out to his fellow child shinobi and flashes away again.

When that particular battle is over (which is really just one battle among the hundreds that make up the war) and Gai is reporting back to the commander ("Thirty-three", he says, and those eyes show just a glimpse of fear, so Gai starts in on one of his practiced litanies about the Youthfulness of something-or-other and watches the fear fade, to be replace by weirded-out amusement) who orders him to the medic's tent to get "patched up" so he won't collapse on the way back to Konoha.

He half-limps, half-skips to the tent, mentally going over his injuries - _broken arm, three stab wounds to his right deltoid and pectoralis major, an arrow through his left bicep femoris_ - and he wears his gleaming smile, watching as the shinobi he passes on the way shift war-weary expressions to the same kind of amusement his commander's eyes held when he left.

He skips into the tent in the most Youthful way he can and shouts "DYNAMIC ENTRY!" at the top of his considerable vocal range. Everyone jumps and then stops what they're doing to stare, before a nurse composes herself and approaches him. She yells at him for overtaxing his pierced leg and asks in exasperation why he can't just walk normally.

The other injured shinobi in the tent watch them in covert mirth and Gai smiles blindingly. He knows exactly why he's doing what he is, but he gives her a lecture on the importance of Making the Best of your Springtime of Youth that leaves her gaping at him.

He never sees the tired eyes below a tuft of spiky gray hair that watch him from the shadowed corner cot, emotionless eyes just a little bit lighter.

**5**

Gai finds Kakashi standing in front of the Memorial Stone holding a bright orange book October 11th. It's the first time he ever gives the Speech of Too Much Youth and he quite enjoys it. Kakashi just rolls his visible eye over from the freshly carved names in the Stone to him and then shrugs and goes back to his book.

Gai decides in that one single second that Kakashi ignores him, that this is the person he will torment with his Cheerful Youth until he begs for it to stop. So he cries big, fat tears and adds a tiny genjutsu to them to make them sparkle like the sun and declares Kakashi his Eternal Rival because it's going to be Gai verses Kakashi for the rest of their lives until one of them breaks and kills the other.

(He's already hoping that Kakashi will break soon, because Gai really doesn't have anything left to live for, what with Kyuubi having taken the only family connection he had left.)

He isn't expecting Kakashi to shrug and idly agree but presses forward, trying to provoke a violent reaction from the younger teen by posing several ridiculous challenges.

He's surprised again, and disappointed, that instead of getting a vexed reply from the uptight jounin, Kakashi actually agrees to the challenges, but outwardly cheers and gives his - by now - patented Youthful Stance of Victory.

When he gets home that day, he spends the entire evening in his room with the curtains drawn shut, allowing himself to not smile. He cried throughout his parents' funeral, but after the funeral he declared that with the Power of Youth, he would make them proud of him. He isn't sure how much of that was just his mask and how much was from his heart, and he wonders if it should scare him that he's starting to forget how to separate the two.

He stalks around his house (because now everything that was his parents is his) the next morning, breathing in the darkness and the smell of his mother's cooking that still lingers around the kitchen. In the hallway, he catches sight of his unruly hair - it's always been messy; his mother used to run his hands through it fondly, calling him her little crow.

He takes out the largest scissors he can find and claws through his mother's make-up drawer to find the gel she had used to keep her own hair straight. Then he cuts it, taking care to layer it evenly and to use as much of the gel as he can.

He ends up looking like a shiny black mushroom and smirks darkly at his reflection. Then he smiles widely, teeth glittering viciously, and punches it. The mirror breaks, as does most of the wall. The house shudders ominously and Gai laughs until he chokes.

No one really cares that he's changed his hair and looks even weirder than before and it makes him so angry that he doesn't have anyone left to ask him just what the hell he thought he was doing. (His mother had been appalled the first time he'd given her his Stance of Victory.)

He never sees the eyes of Sarutobi Hiruzen follow him across the rooftops, worry creasing the already weary face.

**6**

The first time he gets interrupted during his taijutsu training (no one's dared to interrupt him for anything less than war since he was seven) by Shiranui Genma, he's enthralled.

Genma doesn't show any fear of him, nor does the older man laugh at him, not at his Youthful Power Suit or his sparkly teeth or his gelled down hair.

It's intoxicating.

Genma, with his senbon between thin lips and his sly smiles and easy laughs, is like a drug and Gai is drowning in him, becoming addicted to the rush the older shinobi's presence brings.

He doesn't know what to do about it, at first. He doesn't even know what it is he wants from Genma, at first, other than training together and spending time in his company. They never go out to drink; instead Genma brings sake and they sit under the night sky, getting drunk.

And suddenly, it's become so much easier to forget. About everything, and in addition to this most Wondrous Forgetfulness, he doesn't even choke on his mask anymore. At least not very often.

When he wakes up one morning to find his thighs sticky with cum, he realizes that he _likes_ Genma and he's a little horrified by that. (It's not that Genma is a man, it's that Gai's _scared_ of sex; he could so easily lose control in a moment of passion and kill his lover with one wrong move.)

That very day he goes out of his way to find Genma. It's been a long time since he's actually looked for anyone specific besides Kakashi but it doesn't take him long, he just thinks of it like a mission.

Genma is curious as to why Gai came to find him instead of the other way around, so he follows Gai to an out of the way training area with no fear in his eyes.

Gai tells him that he likes him. Genma just laughs, and says he knows. Gai has to tell him that he wants to have sex with him to get him to understand. Genma just laughs, and says he knows. Gai is a little confused about the fact that Genma doesn't seem scared of sex (he figured all the jounin were scared of sex because they're dangerous, more dangerous than anything else in the world) and then Genma offers to 'bed' him, if he wants.

It's the first time he drops his mask in front of someone else since he made it because he has to ask why Genma isn't scared. (He doesn't specify sex.) Genma looks at him then, and asks what he means.

So he laughs it off with a grand Speech of the Youthfulness of Connection and dashes away, hoping that the man thinks he was talking about relationships because he's heard men are supposed to be scared of relationships.

He never sees the alarmed look Genma gives him as he leaves, too much in a hurry to leave.

**7**

When Gai is asked to report at the HQ for Torture and Interrogation he wonders idly if they've figure out how damned crazy he is.

That's not what they want to talk to him about though; Yamanaka Inoichi wants to test his skills to see if he would make a good ANBU operative.

After finishing the test he waits in the interrogation room and Inoichi sits across the table from him. Gai can already see the creeping fear in those pupil-less eyes (that sort of scares him, because Inoichi is the head of the T&I department and if he can scare this man, how is he ever going to alleviate everyone else's fear of him?) and instead of ducking his head, starts to speak loudly of the Power of his Youth and the Will of Fire that he possesses.

Inoichi tells him to shut up and he mocks the blond man with wide eyes and declares that Inoichi must be falling into the Winter of Discontent and needs to find His Youth Once Again. (It takes Gai two minutes to turn that slight fear in Inoichi's eyes to laughter and he doesn't realize until after he's left that the laughter wasn't scornful.)

Inoichi's questions take on a different meaning after that and Gai knows that he has to answer truthfully, but he still keeps most of the answers that would truly matter close to his green-clad chest. In the end, he feels like there is no point saying anything about it; if they don't notice, then maybe it's all just in his head. Which doesn't matter, because he knows that he'd never betray Konoha by purposefully allowing an enemy to kill him.

(Kakashi isn't an enemy of Konoha, so he doesn't count.)

He's a good shinobi, and that's all he is. He wonders if anyone will ever realize just how good a shinobi he is, even outside the field. Masks and masks and masks, melding and reforming and shaping him until he feels like a hollow clay figure.

Inoichi nods and dismisses him and Gai grins and grins and steps outside the door, feeling claustrophobic in the green spandex.

He never sees Inoichi's thoughtful eyes watch his back, a nigh invisible frown forming on his face.

**8**

He's never really given a thought about the boy the Kyuubi is sealed into. Why should he, when he has so many other things to worry about?

(Like destroying his reputation and angering Kakashi into killing him.)

So when he jumps down from a roof to go inside the grocery store to pick up a few essentials - he's just gotten back to Konoha after being away for just over a week on a mission - and a small blond boy hurls past him with a crumbling loaf of bread in his hands running from the screaming vendor, he doesn't really care enough to notice other than note the theft. He'll contact the police after he's done shopping.

It's later, when he's eating his own bread, in his own house, that he remembers the whisker marks that he'd seen.

He doesn't put much thought into it that day, because lately he's been feeling like he's drowning whenever he thinks about things too long in the way that belongs to the Maskless Gai. He turns his thoughts back to the new taijutsu form he had just recently started to develop, and gets lost in anatomy and how to optimize muscle movements.

The second time he sees the whiskered boy, about two months later, he's hiding behind a garbage bin, eating another piece of presumably stolen bread. Gai watches him covertly, sees his gaze move across the street and over the passing villagers. He is dirty and his clothes are ragged, but he has that street look about him; he doesn't look weak or breakable. He looks like a survivor.

And Gai doesn't know exactly what it is in that gaze that compels him to care even in his semi-daze of hidden madness, but he leaves his untouched cup ramen on the garbage bin, careful in his movements to make sure the boy won't notice him. He's not sure if the boy will dare to eat it, and after a few steps away, he's too gone to care much.

He never sees the careful blue eyes dart from the warm ramen and up to him, and never finds out just why the sunny-haired teenager, who would come to burn brighter than the stars, keeps insisting on inviting him to Ichiraku Ramen Stand whenever they run into each other years later.

**9**

Inuzuka Kaori is the second person that he finds himself wanting in a physical manner, so he never stays long whenever she shows up. Because she's also jounin, it means he's rarely seen in the jounin lounge or near other jounin congregation areas.

He's sure that everyone will assume he's training.

He's not, though, or at least not exactly. He usually finds something to punch (a tree, a log, a boulder) and lets all the things that are too dangerous for him to feel come out in the form of blood splatters on whatever he's pounding into dust. He never uses chakra to do this, and the skin scrapes off his knuckles and a few times he breaks bones in his hands and it feel wonderful - horrible - to know that he's not just dangerous to the people around him, he's dangerous to himself as well.

When he breaks his right hand for the third time in a month, Momoko - who has been the one tending to him when he actually bothers to go to the hospital - yells at him, telling him that there is a limit to how much damage his fingers will be able to take before they'll end up permanently disfigured. Gai grins faux-apologetically and glances down at his bandaged hand. Momoko apparently doesn't think he's being serious, because she shouts,

"_What would you do if you couldn't use any nin- or genjutsu because your fingers are ruined?! What kind of shinobi would that make you?!"_

Gai nods seriously, masks tightly in place and when he walks out the hospital - having decided that he should probably learn more than the basic medical jutsu, so he won't have to return so often - he wonders what kind of shinobi that _would_ make him. In the end, he shrugs inwardly, looking down at how the skin stretches oddly around some of the more badly healed bumps in his fingers-

-and he misses Momoko's aborted wave and very worried brown eyes that look down at him from the window of the second floor.

**10**

Gai walks down one of the back alleys on his way home from a particularly gruesome assassination and for once he feels too tired to put up any of his masks. His thoughts are jumbled into a mess, collapsing in on themselves and out of his mouth in incoherent whispers. He spills out details about the mission that didn't make the report; the unnecessary bits about smells, blood, body fluids sticking to his hands and the expression on the daughter's face when she walked in through the door to see her mother and father in pieces on the floor.

He hadn't known they had a daughter, they hadn't told him - they probably hadn't known about it, or otherwise it would have come up in the mission debriefing. But Gai hates anyway, because he seemed to be getting more and more dangerous every time he looked into the mirror. Sometimes he even imagined it was visible through his masks, like a haze, obscuring his vision. In reality, he had just been a good shinobi and killed the teenage girl before she even had the chance to scream. Then he'd cleaned up and started the trek back home.

He's nearing the ANBU HQ when he hears it. A choking sound. Someone's retching, and he hears the pitter-patter of bile splattering on the ground somewhere ahead of him. Gai slows down and soften his mumbling to a croon, approaching the bent over figure leaning over a container.

It only takes his muddled mind a few seconds to place the figure, despite his current state, and he shuffles forward.

"Uchiha-kun?" His voice is hoarse, and he's not surprised that Itachi doesn't recognize it at first, despite them having worked together only last weeks. He had his masks up back then, and with his masks, he is invisible.

"Maito-senpai." The young prodigy looks up with spinning sharingan eyes, lined with red and black from sleepless nights. Gai assesses him objectively and knows exactly what he's found. Being in ANBU is hard on everyone, and no matter how much people would want their pet genius to be without fault, Gai hadn't really expected that to be true no matter how much Youthful Faith he'd spewed over anyone who'd made disparaging remarks about the Uchiha heir.

Gai opens his medical bag and retrieves a small bottle containing a beige cream. It's something of his own making and invaluable to keep his masks in place.

"Here."

Itachi looks at the bottle, tilting it to the side and examining the contents. He looks back up at Gai again, not suspicious, but wary. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the dangerous Gai purrs his approval at the cautiousness. Never let down your guard around me, he whispers.

"It reduces the signs of sleepless nights," Gai says bluntly, without embellishments or further explanations.

Itachi just watches him. (Gai thinks that Itachi might understand his mask of perfection, because he seems to have his own type of perfect.)

The Uchiha prodigy hefts the bottle and nods his thanks before shunshining off. Gai watches him go only for a moment before he dawns his ANBU style Youthfulness again and bounds towards the HQ.

The memory of that one time meeting gets lost in his mind for six months, and comes back with a vengeance when Gai is one of the shinobi that have to clean the bodies from the Uchiha District.

He cries out to his fellow shinobi about how UnYouthful the Traitor is and about the Descent of Winter into Itachi's soul.

He doesn't believe a single thing that he says. (Itachi left his brother alive, after all.)

Because of his usual boisterous personality, no one notices him when he skulks around the slums of Konoha, so no one sees him gathering any information he can find about Itachi and why he did what he did. Most of the information he gathers is useless, but there are a few notable points that he makes sure to destroy the evidence of.

Itachi went out of his way to make himself seem like the bad guy and Gai isn't going to ruin that for him.

He never sees the dark, pre-sharingan eyes that follow him from the hospital bed, and then later, from the main house in the Uchiha District, watching, and hating, his 'happiness'.

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End file.
